Cuban authorities have released a political prisoner who, 15 years ago, was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for "espionage and enemy propaganda," an opposition spokesman told the French news agency AFP on Thursday.">Cuban authorities have released a political prisoner who, 15 years ago, was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for "espionage and enemy propaganda," an opposition spokesman told the French news agency AFP on Thursday.">

Another political prisoner is released

Cuban authorities have released a political prisoner who, 15 years ago, was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for "espionage and enemy propaganda," an opposition spokesman told the French news agency AFP on Thursday.

Edberto Ángel Escobedo Morales, 44, left prison on Wednesday, five years short of serving his full term, said Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz, head of a human rights organization in Havana. Escobedo was released on parole, presumably for health reasons.

The report did not say where Escobedo was imprisoned, but for several years earlier, he was an inmate at the Cerámicas Rojas prison in Camagüey, his home town.

Escobedo "was arrested after he joined a military counterintelligence unit to obtain information for the opposition," Sánchez explained. A 1997 press release by Cuba Press said Escobedo was also charged with the "forcible theft of documents, maps, files and video cassettes with secret information from the Youth Labor Army of Camagüey."